The Hindu Business Line : Railways H1 earnings up

THE Indian Railways has registered total revenue of about Rs 21,957 crore for the first half of the fiscal 2004-05, which is up 2.03 per cent than its target of Rs 21,520.05 crore. The total earnings are higher by 7.14 per cent when compared with last year's figures for the same period.

Out of the total amount, Rs 14,304 crore are its revenues from freight transportation and Rs 6,979 crore accrued from passenger earnings during March-September. The rest of the earnings are from Railways' other activities including "coaching and sundries," informed official sources.

Though there has been no upward revision in rates, the earnings from both passenger and freight transport have gone up compared with last year's and the targets set for the half-yearly period. The passenger earnings are up primarily due to increase in traffic, whereas the higher freight earnings can be attributed to various factors including rise in net tonnage, increase in the total as well as average distance transported by the Railways during the period.

The passenger revenues of Rs 6,978.83 crore are up 5.33 per cent from the earnings of Rs 6,625.47 crore during March-September 2003. Moreover, the revenues have surpassed the target of Rs 66,911.99 crore by 0.97 per cent for March-September 2004.

As for the number of passengers, the total ticketed traffic has gone up to 2,720.48 million for the six months ended September 2004, compared with 2,585.79 million during the same period last year.

Out of the total passenger traffic in H1, 1,556.61 million were suburban passengers whereas 1163.87 million were non-suburban passengers. On a year-on-year basis for the period, while the suburban passenger traffic has gone up by 4.9 per cent, the non-suburban traffic is up by 5.62 per cent.

The Railways' freight earnings of about Rs 14,303 crore have surpassed the target for the period by 4.2 per cent. Compared with its freight earnings in the first half of 2003-04, the revenues are higher by 8.34 per cent.

There has been a rise in average lead for the six months ended September with the average lead touching 692 km, which is up 1.75 per cent compared to the average lead of 680 km during March-September 2003.

Average lead stands for the average distance, over a given period, across which the Railways transports revenue-earning freight. The higher the average lead, higher is the revenue earned by Railways.